


To Dissolve In Light

by BainAduial



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 17:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1718354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BainAduial/pseuds/BainAduial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What goes through the mind of an Angel, as he prepares to die? (Written right after episode 5x18, Point of No Return. No spoilers or references past that point.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Dissolve In Light

Castiel thinks – knows, really – that they sometimes forget what he is. Oh, they know he’s an Angel of the Lord, both brothers call him by his species often enough. But they do it the same way they refer to everything else in their lives – ghost, vampire, wendigo, demon. Angel. Just one more supernatural phenomena. On par with the minor denizens of Hell – and they’re all minor, the ones the Winchesters meet, even Alistair, even Lillith – in power and ambition and ability to alter the world. 

He isn’t.

Superficially, he supposes, it looks that way. He and the demons both take on human vessels to walk the earth, their power channelled through fragile blood and bone. The demons wear their forms better than he does, but then, they all started human themselves. Human and fallible, and when they fell they fell into the power of those so much greater than they were. Minor denizens of Hell, dogs attacking at the bidding of their masters; masters whose existence had begun before the creation of the world. 

Not many left, now, of the Fallen. Only Lucifer and a few of his closest. The rest destroyed, by war and by time. Long slow eons trapped in the pit, cut off from Grace – Castiel knows he would go insane. Many of the Fallen had.

Castiel may yet get the chance to join them. His Grace diminishes daily now, though the Winchesters have yet to notice. It’s a slow trickle that could easily become a flood. He remembers the early days of his brother’s rebellion, how it had started with questions and doubts and arguments, and the Eldest – what humans call the Archangels – called into their Father’s presence while Castiel, youngest of all the Host, still very much a child, performed the Angelic equivalent of hiding under the bed. 

He’d been little more than a teenager, younger in Angel terms than the Winchesters are now, when argument and doubt had turned to the choosing of sides, and to war. Sometimes, Castiel wonders if this was why he rose so high in the ranks, became the perfect heavenly soldier – because he was young enough to be moulded by war. 

Their Father left; none of the others speak of it, but Castiel has always wondered if he simply couldn’t bear watching children he created and loved killing each other. 

Michael won; reality was bent to create the pit and hurl Lucifer and his followers down. Something in them broke that day, Castiel thinks; Michael was harder and colder after, never had the time for the youngest anymore. Gabriel, who had never been meant for battle, went a little mad – Castiel remembers thinking, between his chattering and his pranks, that they would eventually lose Gabriel too. As they had.

Castiel remembers a time before the Fall, when heaven was bright and glorious beyond mortal comprehension. It had dimmed so gradually none of them had noticed. Like so many things, Castiel has had his perception of his home changed by learning to see the world through Dean’s eyes. And he has doubted, where he never doubted before. Doubted that his Father will ever come back. Doubted Michael is following His will any longer. Doubted, doubted, doubted.

Even now, begun to doubt his own place there. The Father created the Host first, but he created humans differently, and Castiel knows the Father loves them more. It was the entire reason for Lucifer’s rebellion, after all. The Fallen had struck out in jealousy and pain. But those who had stayed, Michael and his followers – they had stayed out of duty and arrogance, not love. Castiel can see that now, sees echoes of it in the relationships of the humans he has come to know. 

Maybe it is, after all, only because he is the youngest, the last created before the dawn of the world, maybe because he saw that dawn with the eyes of a child. Whatever the reason, unlike his brothers Castiel cannot see the world or the creatures on it as a duty. Cannot see them as anything but the wondrous creations of his Father that they are. Younger siblings he’s been left to raise and watch over and cherish in all their glory and all their pain.

It made him the perfect choice to pull Dean Winchester’s soul from perdition. Only a pure love of his Father’s creations could have accomplished it. He regrets that it took him so long to fight his way down; Dean was left without aid for long enough to break the first seal, and that is Castiel’s fault even if he’s starting to suspect his brothers intended it that way. 

He had thought, after winding his Grace around Dean’s soul and intertwining them to raise Dean up, that the elder Winchester would have no trouble perceiving him in his true form. It hurt, a little, that that wasn’t the case. That the man whose soul he had held close didn’t know him at all. But slowly, Dean had begun to trust him, to know him, this time in an all-too-human way. 

A way that had led, ultimately, to this moment, to Cas standing in a warehouse surrounded by brothers he had once fought beside, sigils of banishment carved into his skin and pondering how little the Winchesters understood of the nature of angels.  
The brothers Castiel is about to murder, the ones they have already killed, even Lucifer, fairest of them all and Fallen so, so far – they are so much more than the demons the Winchesters regularly slay. Their true forms cloaked in the fire of unborn suns, voices ringing with the harmonies of the universe. So much incomprehensible power and glory and ageless, terrible, wondrous beauty. The beings he is destroying, his brothers, are not fallen human souls. They are celestial beings, who have ridden the tails of comets and sung with the voices of stars.

But Castiel sees no other option; the apocalypse must be halted, and this is their best hope. Castiel is glad to give his life for this cause, to know that the world his Father had loved so well will continue. Every moment of his immortal life has led to this, and he smiles grimly as he raises his palm to activate the sigils burning with his blood.

The world dissolves in light.


End file.
